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February 6, 2012

One Year Ago

I took this photo one year ago today from the beaches at Cinque Terre. This was one of the most amazing sunsets I have ever seen.

The town I shot it from is called Vernazza. This winter Vernazza and some of the other towns along that section of coast were devastated by landslides. The cleanup effort is under way, but it will be a long hard process. You can find more information here.

The sun as you can see is not round in this picture, it is sorta split into two and squished a bit. This is because of the temperature of the air not steadily decreasing with altitude, rather, it decreases at a variable rate, or perhaps even has an inversion in the atmosphere where the temperature increases with hight for a bit. The effect is a mirage.

It is such a nice sight that I will not sully it with any more babble about temperature, instead I want to thank my cousin. This weekend he graciously has let me borrow his telescope. It is a 4 inch refractor, and the really cool thing is that it is motorized and can track the stars as the earth spins. I am hoping to get an adaptor that will allow me to attach my camera directly to the telescope so that I can get some long exposure pictures of things in the sky without them just turning into streaks. So thank you again sir!